Archive for the 'Courtney Love' Tag Under 'Soundcheck' Category

Though Courtney Love wasn't performing in Hole – the band she found fame with in the '90s and briefly revived a few years ago – she certainly managed to dig herself into one during Saturday's gig at City National Grove of Anaheim.

Realistically, the show was over before it started. When Love took the stage a quarter after 9 o'clock – following an excruciatingly pointless collection of poorly tuned noise jams from opening act STARRED – and launched into Hole's "Plump," her voice was nearly gone.

Love's singing was never a strong suit to begin with, though it usually worked to complement her grungy style. This, on the other hand, was unsalvageable. Yells and shrieks that should have resonated powerfully dissolved into ragged gasps almost immediately. Imagine Bob Dylan, inebriated to the point of annoyance, with laryngitis. Now you're starting to get the picture.

But where Dylan would have bowed out sensibly and gracefully, Love inexplicably continued, croaking through and butchering a cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Gold Dust Woman" and likewise floundering on attempts at softer tunes like "Pacific Coast Highway" and "Asking for It."

There had been so much unfounded badmouthing leading into KROQ'sWeenie Roast 2010 this past weekend -- the lineup has no wow (or even now) factor, pseudo-Sublime really isn't a headliner -- that I'm pleased to report Saturday's bash at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine wound up among the better, more evenly boiled Weenies in recent memory.

Contributor Steven Mirkin braved ear-splitting shrieks, a crowd-surfing Akon, 20 minutes of Glambert and the contagion that is Bieber Fever to file this report ...

KIIS-FM's annual Wango Tango concert, held this year at Staples Center, can be seen as the Top 40 powerhouse's “state of the station,” previewing acts it will be spinning all summer.

And at more than 4½ hours -- including ads, skits, interviews with reality stars, random celebrities (David Hasselhoff?!), actors with movies to plug, commentary by a host from Entertainment Tonight and intros for intros to intros to performances, all interrupted by occasional snatches of music -- it often felt like a road trip with a car radio that only picks up one station. As is the case with most road trips, your mileage may vary.

Yet two things were apparent by the end of the night: hip-hop remains the most dominant style in mainstream pop (even sensations Justin Bieber and Ke$ha took their cues from rap, while Usher, above, and Ludacris owned the night) and record sales are no guarantee of charisma.

Thus, newcomer Iyaz, who lip-synced his single “Solo,” couldn't compete with his video (it played behind him as he mouthed the words), and B.o.B., who topped the album charts a few weeks ago with “The Adventures of Bobby Ray,” needed help from Bruno Mars and Weezer's Rivers Cuomo to hold the sold-out crowd's attention.

Stepping back on stage, having changed from a gold bodice and flouncy skirt into a tight red dress that made her look like a trashy Madonna, the perpetually recovering star realized that what had just transpired at the former Fonda Theatre was indeed oddly brief: “I know -- that felt short, right? It felt cut off.”

Courtney Love was referring to her first encore Thursday night at the Music Box in Hollywood, her first of two shows at the venue with her re-formed group Hole, and her first more or less full-length performance in Southern California since the ill-fated ManHole Tour of 1999, a teaming with Marilyn Manson that played the then-Pond of Anaheim.

She might as well have been referring to the whole set here, however, as Love entered to the strains of Ravel's “Bolero” at about 10:15 p.m. and, two encores later, was finished before an hour had gone by. Yet, within that short span, the notorious '90s icon -- more infamous for drug-addled behavior this past decade than celebrated for her role as a fierce female rocker -- not only crammed in all but one key Hole track, she also offered convincing proof that a slow-rising comeback could actually happen.

On Tuesday, Love will release Nobody's Daughter, the first official Hole album since 1998's Celebrity Skin. (Its ripping title track is what was missing from Thursday's show, though perhaps it will appear in tonight's replay.) Though the 11-song assortment is essentially a long-gestating solo album slightly revamped by new guitarist Micko Larkin, building on initial contributions from Linda Perry and Billy Corgan, the fourth official Hole disc firmly re-establishes Love as a compelling, warts-and-all confessional songwriter still exorcising her darkest demons -- substance abuse (“Loser Dust”), her sordid past (“How Dirty Girls Get Clean”) and, finally, Kurt Cobain's suicide, which she wraps into another paean to her love/hate relationship with Los Angeles in “Pacific Coast Highway.”

“I'm overwrought and so disgraced,” she sings, “I'm too ashamed to show my face / And they're coming to take me away now / What I want I will never have / I'm on the Pacific Coast Highway / With your gun in my hand.” Another piece, the wrenching “Letter to God,” finds her turning heavenward for guidance after apologizing for “being such a freak” and insisting “I never wanted to be some kind of comic relief.” Yet, though it sounds as if angrily scrawled during a late night of last-ditch desperation, that Perry-penned song apparently had minimal input from Love.

After several weeks of teasing -- during which seemingly every woman in music save for Courtney Love and Madonna was announced as part of the overall Lilith Fair roster -- we finally have local details for the revived all-female festival.

All along we had heard that the "Los Angeles" stop was actually in Irvine -- now we know that it's July 10 at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, to be exact. Just ahead of that, the estrogen-fueled fest will arrive July 7 at Cricket Wireless Amphitheatre in Chula Vista. Tickets for both shows go on sale April 3.